I PICKED MY WAY BACK DOWN THE MOUNTAINSIDE carefully, wondering what to do with myself. I’d been planning on spending the rest of the day with Luka, lounging on the beach and then walking down the waterfront riva once the sun set, past the lanky rows of palm trees and the vendors who sold crepes, salty roasted corn, and oily cones of French fries drizzled with ketchup. No chance of that now. Čiča Jovan’s studio, maybe, though he’d sniff out my off-kilter mood as soon as he laid eyes on me.
Back at the Cathedral Square, I went to unchain my bike, only to falter midstep when I realized the café door was closed—not even a flicker of movement inside. The doorknob wouldn’t budge beneath my hand. Stifling a flare of panic, I cupped my hands around my face and peered in against the glare. Two crumb-crusted plates sat on the counter, alongside a slice of Spanish wind cake with frosting melting around the yellow dough and a mound of dried-out macarons.
My stomach knotted. The store was never empty at this time of day. We were open from seven in the morning until whenever we ran out of food at night, which was never earlier than six. I couldn’t remember a single time when at least one of us wasn’t behind the counter, a counter that should have been impeccable. Those abandoned desserts, wilting and far from beautiful, worried me more than anything else.
“Lina!” I called, rapping sharply against the glass. “Jasmina!”
Neither of them answered.
My heart pounding, I swung my leg over the bike and launched myself through the streets. Some of the alleys were so narrow that, had I been walking, I could have brushed both walls with only slightly lifted hands. I’d been navigating this polished stone maze since I was little, and this time of day there was barely anyone around to slow my headlong hurtle.
By the time I skidded to a stop in front of our flowered fence, I was so afraid I was gulping back tears, panic clogging my throat. When I found Malina in the yard on the creaking porch swing, with her legs tucked beneath her and Nikoleta curled against her side, fury burst through me like a flushed-out pipe.
“What the fuck is going on, Lina?” I demanded, flinging my bike against the fence so hard the chain links rattled. “Why is the café closed? I thought—” I rested my hands on my thighs and took a shaky breath. “I thought something happened to you and Jasmina. Why the hell are you even out here? Where’s Jasmina?”
Niko leaped up like a shot, moving to stand half in front of Lina, small hands planted on her hips. I would have laughed if I hadn’t been almost hysterical; Niko had a face like a doe, heart-shaped and fine-featured as Luka’s, her silky hair parted far from the left and sweeping above sloe eyes. She was petite and dark as their Bosnian Romany mother had been, and with her head tilted and jaw jutting, she looked like a fierce, tiny lapdog defending her mistress.
“Stop it, Iris,” she snapped at me. Her voice sometimes still caught me by surprise, so much deeper and scratchier than it should have been. All that grit and smoke from such a pixie of a girl. “Can’t you see she’s already upset? Does this look like the time to terrorize?”
“I didn’t mean—”
She chopped the air with one hand. “You never do. So maybe shut up first, and give Malina the chance to use her words. They’re just as perfectly good as yours, I’m sure you know.”
“Niko,” Lina admonished quietly. “Maybe don’t?”
“Fine.” Niko dropped back down to the swing, crossing her tanned legs so that the bell charm strung on her anklet sang out a deceptively sweet little chime, but her torso thrummed with tension. If I still wanted to fight, Nikoleta Damjanac would surely proceed to bring it. “Do your snappy thing before you say anything else, go on. It’ll help.”
I ground my teeth—Niko was even more impossible than Luka sometimes, all his logic and double the fire, minus the steely restraint—and wormed my finger beneath the elastic around my left wrist, snapping it three times until the sting pierced through the panic and rage. Once I’d remembered how to breathe I turned back to Lina, and now I could see that she’d been crying, and hard.
“Mama’s inside,” she said thickly. “I tried to stay in with her—to clean her up a little—but I couldn’t take it, I’m sorry. I just couldn’t listen to it.”
“Did someone hurt her? What’s wrong with her?”
Lina gave a hoarse laugh. “She’s drunk, Riss. Stinking drunk. Like Mihajlo the Widower on a Saturday night.”
I shook my head. “She can’t be. You know Mama never drinks.”
Lina shrugged one shoulder listlessly. “Well, she smells like she’s been spending quality time with you, and threw up on herself at least once. So, there’s that?”
“I’m happy to offer a second opinion,” Niko said. “Based on the sample size of my brother and father, I can confidently concur that Jasmina’s drunk as shit.”
Malina gave a little hiccupping giggle through her tears, and Niko nudged her gently in the side. “See, that’s better, pie,” she murmured. “More of that, less of the salt.”
Despite everything, I felt a sharp gnaw of jealousy at the two of them. We’d all grown up together and I enjoyed Niko when we weren’t at each other’s throats, but Malina had always been better friends with her. Watching them, I could never tell which one I was even jealous of: Malina for having a best friend who wasn’t her own twin, or Niko for being able to both calm and warm my sister like I never could, like some sort of tiger balm.
I chewed on the inside of my lip, my mind racing in an effort to wrest everything back under control. “Tell me what happened after I left.”
“Mama left the café right after you did, maybe five minutes after,” Lina replied. “Said she had an appointment, but wouldn’t tell me what. Since when does Mama have appointments, Riss? She never leaves the café during the day!”
Her voice rose, and Niko patted her thigh, making the low bear-cub rumble that meant annoyance or concern. Lina leaned against her for a moment, taking a deep breath and releasing it in a shuddering rush. My insides folded against each other; I wouldn’t be able to tell her about Dunja yet. She needed to know, and I needed her thoughts, but she was too delicate right now. I’d have to hold that on my own for at least a little longer.
“I’m fine, really,” she said to Niko, scooching away slightly. “I’ve got it now. Anyway, Riss, she came back maybe an hour or so later, and she just looked—I don’t know. Beside herself, but all hollow. Like someone had died or something. So then she went into the larder and poured herself a glass—”
“Not a shot glass, but a glass-glass?”
“An actual glass. Two-thirds of the way up, like she was pouring water, and then she just drank it down in one go. I swear, she barely even flinched.” She giggled wetly. “After that she just swiped the whole rakija bottle, like, to hell with this. It was actually pretty funny. I told her she was embarrassing us in front of the customers and then made her come home with me.”
“You told her—you made her come home with you?”
“It wasn’t so hard. She was getting a bit weirdly lovey by then.” Her lips trembled. “It’s all dissonance, like she . . . like she doesn’t know her own mind?”
“Okay, then.” I gritted my teeth. “I’m going to go see her. Why don’t you stay with Niko, bunny.”
She shook her head. “I’m coming with you. It’s bad enough I just left her in there in the first place.”
“Are you sure?” Niko murmured. “Iris can handle this, whatever it is. You could come home with me, sleep over tonight if you wanted.”
“No, you go on, I’ll see you tomorrow?” She looked back at me, teeth sinking into the notches of her lower lip. “You’re not some conquering hero, Riss. It shouldn’t always be just you when things get ugly, you know?”
THE PUNGENT BLISTER of liquor struck me as soon as we crossed our threshold. It was rakija, for sure; nothing else smelled both so sharp and foul. I assumed there were expensive brands that were probably smoother than anything I’d ever sampled, but from the smell of it, Mama hadn’t been indulging in anything particularly top-shelf. Beside me, Malina nearly gagged, pressing the back of her hand against her mouth.
“See?” she choked out. “It’s like you this morning. If all the air everywhere was made of your breath.”
I ignored her. “Mama?” I called out, peering into the kitchen. Empty.
“Iris? That you?”
A wave of chills swept down my spine; I almost didn’t recognize her voice. Underneath the slur, there was something else, a note of pleading I’d never heard from Mama before.
Another “Iris?” floated out, followed by a genuinely pitiful little moan. Lina and I exchanged a wide-eyed “oh shit” look before I laced my fingers with hers and followed Mama’s voice to her bedroom, Lina trailing behind me.
I gently pushed the door open, peering around it. Mama’s room was bigger than ours, but not by much, dominated by her sleigh bed. I lifted my gaze to the nook beneath her window, and my heart gave a hiccup—there she was, back against the wall and knees drawn up to her chin, her gray sheath ridden up so high I could see the long, tempered muscle of her thigh.
I let go of Lina’s hand and slid between the footboard and the armoire, perching on the edge of the bed. Mama looked up at me wide-eyed, her face pale and salty-streaked with tears. She seemed so achingly young that I found myself suddenly overwhelmed with sympathy, a corkscrew twisting in my center. With her hair tangled and undone, dark as baker’s chocolate and so long it nearly reached her waist, I suddenly remembered that Mama—the villain and the wicked witch, the stepmother who’d had the misfortune of actually bearing her unwanted offspring—was barely thirty-six years old.
“How are you doing?” I said, trying to remember the last time I’d spoken to her so gently. “I think maybe you need some water.”
She shook her head once, like a decisive toddler. “No water.” Squinting one eye shut, she reached down and groped around the floor beneath the alcove. “Was a bottle there . . .”
“I think that’s all gone now. Why don’t we—”
I went rigid as she wrapped her fingers around my wrist, tugging at me until I stood from the bed, practically looming above her. Her face turned so soft as it tilted up toward mine that I barely recognized my own mother.
“Iris . . . ,” she murmured, stroking the inside of my wrist. Her eyes filled with tears, like water rushing over a frozen pond, and her face crumpled. “My hibiscus daughter. Why . . .” She shook her head and swallowed. “Why did you have to grow up so strong? Why did you have to make it so hard?”
With that, her arms circled me, locking around my waist, and she buried her cheek against my middle. I was so shocked that for a moment I stood stiff, arms lifted away from my sides.
“I don’t know what to do,” she whispered against my belly. “It wasn’t supposed to . . . it wasn’t supposed to go like this.”
“What do you mean?” I whispered, setting one hand cautiously on top of her head. Her hair was finer than mine, thick and silky, the crown of her head warm beneath my palm. I dug my fingertips into her scalp and rubbed, trying to ease her like I did with Malina sometimes. “What wasn’t supposed to?”
She whimpered against my stomach, her shoulders hunching, and I felt such a tremendous, unfamiliar flood of love for her I almost began to cry myself as I met Lina’s wide eyes above Mama’s head. “Let’s get you into bed,” I said.
She let me hook my hands under her armpits and heave her bonelessly up against me, Lina pulling down the sheets and gently tugging her toward the middle of the mattress. As soon as I moved away she bolted upright, her face taut with panic. “Where are you going?”
“Just to bring you some water,” I soothed. “I’ll be back in a minute. Lina will stay with you.”
Mama shot me a look halfway between pleading and suspicion, then sank back onto her elbows, letting her head fall against Lina’s shoulder. “My cherry girl, you smell so sunny,” I heard her mumble as I left. “Do you still love me? At least a little?”
In the bathroom, I filled a glass and ran a washcloth under the faucet, wringing it out. The girl in the mirror looked so much more in control than I felt. Her eyes stared back at me, water-pale, and in the dim light from the tiny window the bones in my face looked not just stark but beautiful, my lips fine and dainty as the negative space left behind by a paintbrush. I splashed water on my face, taking deep breaths until my hands stopped shaking. I could do this. I could always do whatever it took.
Back in the bedroom, I clambered carefully onto the bed, shuffling to Mama on my knees. I handed the glass to Lina, and she held it to our mother’s lips and fed her tiny sips as I dabbed at her face and the ruined front of her dress.
“Can you turn around for me?”
I unzipped her, tugging the dress down while she wriggled against it like an eel in a bucket until it finally slipped off. She let me work a T-shirt over her head, then lay back down, cheek pillowed on her arm and eyes half closed. “Will you lie down with me? You haven’t done that since you were so small . . . you so roly-poly, Lina, and you, Iris, such a scrappy thing . . .”
“Roly-poly?” Lina echoed, smoothing a strand off her forehead. “Are you calling me fat, Mama?”
Mama rubbed her cheek against Lina’s shoulder. “Never. Though no Linzer cookie was ever safe from you.”
I knew things hadn’t torn quite as jaggedly between them as they had with Mama and me—there hadn’t been that dangerous sense of rent iron between them—but I’d had no idea they still teased each other this way. They never did it in front of me.
“Riss,” Mama whispered, reaching for me. “Will you come, too, just this once? Please?”
Maybe the nickname was why I gave in. As unfair as it was that even this should be on her terms just like everything else, it was also like water to a cactus, parched even by its own low standards. There was so much I needed to ask her—about Dunja, and about what had driven her to this weakness—but I hadn’t even talked to Malina yet. And seeing her so vulnerable had bled off my fury, enough that I couldn’t bring myself to prick the thin-skinned bubble of this moment.
“Do you remember,” she murmured as I settled awkwardly against her back, jerking when she looped her legs over mine, “do you remember the cake I made you?”
I did. It was for Malina’s and my fifteenth birthday, and it had been a Sacher torte in the form of a roulade. Where there should have been just one layer of raspberry jam filling, she’d lined it with layer after layer of fruit alternating with chocolate, apricot-chocolate-strawberry-chocolate-peach-chocolate, into such a tiny central spiral that the sheets separating the core layers must have been thinner than rice paper. She hadn’t baked us a birthday cake in years by then, but that one must have taken hours.
“I do. It was incredible.” I hesitated. “You never told us why you did that.”
“Because that’s what your bougainvillea tasted like. I wanted you to know.”
She meant the glass sculpture I’d blown, of the twilight bougainvillea that grew in our yard. My fractal masterpiece, the smallest and most precise glasswork depiction I’d ever managed—barely two feet long, yet as close as I’d ever come to conveying that honeycomb sense of infinity. I’d given it to her for her own birthday, that same year. No matter how things curdled between us, I’d never stopped giving her gifts. I told myself it was out of the sweetest spite, killing her with kindness. But it wasn’t, and had never been that.
“Why did you hang it up at the café?” I asked her. “You always used to say the desserts were enough decoration.”
She turned to look at me over her shoulder, until we were nearly nose to nose. Even heavy-lidded and sickly pale, she was magnificent in the slanting afternoon light. When I was little, I’d imagined her as one of the Montenegrin queens I read about in my storybooks—like Queen Jevrosima, ethereal mother of Crown Prince Marko, the hero of so many of our folktales. Prince Marko was a dauntless, vengeful protector of the weak, and I’d loved him with a child’s fierce adoration until I read the story in which he tricked a Moorish princess into marrying him, then stole off with her gold while she slept because her dark skin startled him in the night. After that, I’d always wondered what he’d have to say about my own angled bones and eyes.
But in all the stories his mother had been wise and kind, and unfailingly devoted.
And the way my mother watched me now was exactly as I’d thought Queen Jevrosima must have looked at her own son.
Her eyes fluttered closed, and she sighed. “Because, my flower girl. Because you made it for me.”